


Sneak Peek (Shadow of Uadjet)

by TaleWeaver



Series: Ad astra per aspera - Phase 1 [7]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Skyeward Appreciation Week, Skyeward Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 08:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3321011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWeaver/pseuds/TaleWeaver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sneak peek at my prospective fic for couplebang 2015, In the Shadow of Uadjet</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sneak Peek (Shadow of Uadjet)

**Author's Note:**

> DAY SEVEN – CHLOE AND BRETT APPRECIATION SNEAK PEEK  
>  __  
> As deeply as I appreciate Chloe Bennett and Brett Dalton, I can’t really work with the original theme, since all my fills for Skyeward week 2015 are fanfic; I don’t do Real Person Fic. Ever. I’ve come across some fanfic authours who’ve done it extremely well, in ways that don’t feel invasive of the people involved (especially in the Supernatural fandom), but I don’t feel capable of doing it myself, nor do I want to.  
>  While I was contemplating why I’m late filling half these prompts (I was making myself sick through lack of sleep, so I took a night or two off to watch MythBusters instead; one of my best friends really wanted some company, and I’d blown her off once already to work on this stuff), I came up with yet another idea. I think it’s got legs, and at this point I’m planning to expand it for my entry for couplesbang. So here’s a quick look at my fic tentatively titled In the Shadow of Uadjet, which was inspired by one simple idea: What if Melinda May had been The Clairvoyant’s agent on board the BUS, instead of Grant Ward?
> 
> _NOTE: ‘Andrew’ again refers to Dr Andrew Garner (Melinda May’s ex-husband, a forensic psychologist). Also, the following two scenes are directly based on ep 2x03 ‘Making friends and influencing people’ (one alternate and one missing scene) not to mention some of the more tragic events of the Hydra revealed arc. Angst warning!_

Skye kept firing until she’d emptied the mag, then hit the switch to bring the paper target up to the front of the firing range. As the machinery whirred, she swiftly ejected the mag and efficiently cleared the gun, making sure there was no stray ammo left in the weapon.

“How’d you do?” came Ward’s voice from behind.

Skye showed him her latest target – sporting a group of headshots and a group of heartshots – with restrained pride. “I pretended they were all May.”

Ward’s usual stony cold facade slipped a little, and he gazed at her in what Skye would swear was concern. “Don’t do that anymore.” Before she could work up enough steam to retort, Ward added, “Anger? Hate? You need to be very careful with those. They’re both powerful fuel in the short run, but over longer periods of time, they can poison the very foundation of control you’re striving for. In the long run, they can destroy you. Go read _Moby Dick_ if you don’t believe me. Or better yet, ask Andrew. It’s one of the first things he taught me, when he got me out of juvie.”

“Because forgiveness is required in order to heal?” Skye asked skeptically. She was a long way from forgiving Melinda May – and it got longer every time she saw Coulson half-turn his head, in an aborted attempt to ask a question of a person no longer at his back. “How long did it take you to forgive your parents? Or Christian?”

“I haven’t,” Ward told her matter-of-factly. “I doubt I ever will. But I did find a way to move on from them. To find a kind of revenge in leaving them far behind me.”

Skye bit her lip, and moved a half-step closer, so she could feel the warmth of Grant’s body brush against her skin, even if she couldn’t touch him. “I can’t move past the damage she’s done. I can’t just leave behind what she’s taken from us.”

She wasn’t just talking about the team as a whole, and they both knew it. Grant’s eyes darkened with emotion, and for just a second Skye saw the man she’d known in Providence base. Then his expression iced over again, and he deliberately stepped back.

Turning to the side, he picked up and displayed some kind of rifle that was almost as tall as she was.

“Sniper rifle. I want you to practise with it now, so you can get used to the recoil.” For a moment, he looked almost abashed, then Ward continued. “I know you want to be a field agent-”

“I **am** a field agent,” Skye told him emphatically.

Ward gave her a nod of acknowledgement. “Yes, you are. My point being, sniper is something that normally only specialists get trained for; Coulson knows how to fire a regular rifle, but I doubt he’s ever touched one of these. But this is a skill that we’re lacking on the team.”

Skye eyed him shrewdly. “And it’s got nothing to do with keeping me out of harm’s way?”

“Of course it does.” Grant’s calm admission rocked her just enough not to protest. “I care for our team more than a specialist is supposed to, but I can’t do anything about it. I don’t even want to. So in order to stay focused in the field, I’m spreading my targets as best I can. Fitz won’t be going anywhere for awhile, and even when his occupational therapy’s complete he’ll always have someone with him in the field. Simmons I can’t do anything about right now, and Coulson and Trip can take care of themselves.” Grant looked at her, his eyes entreating her with the things he couldn’t say out loud. “I’m not lying about needing this skill either, Skye. We’ve got several experienced hand-to-hand combatants available besides me, Tripp and Hunter - I’m just being honest when I say that you’re nowhere near that level yet. But we have a limited pool of agents, and one of the things that can drastically reduce the risk of losing another team member is having someone who can literally watch our backs. Saying ‘look out behind you’ isn’t just a horror movie cliché, Skye, it’s something that can keep our people alive. Ask Coulson to tell you a few stories about Barton sometime. And yes, Skye – if it keeps you far away from enemy bullets, it means that I won’t have to divide my attention to make sure you’re safe.”

Skye took a deep breath, and forced her voice to be calm and reasonable, not whiny. “You’ve been training me to keep myself safe. You still are. Why can’t you trust in that training?”

“It’s not that, Skye.” Grant’s eyes were dark and burning again, and Skye’s next breath caught in her throat. “It’s that I won’t ever – I **can’t** ever - stop looking to make sure you’re alright. I’ve accepted that’s never going to change, not as long as I live. So I have to find ways of making sure it doesn’t affect my efficiency in the field. Or my ability to keep the others safe too.”

Skye bit her lip, and once again damned Melinda May to Hell. The last circle, reserved for mutineers and betrayers. Of all the damage she’d wrought, the part Skye hated May for most was what she’d done to Grant and Skye’s nascent relationship – and it had been for nothing more than a distraction.

Skye hadn’t had a lot of experience with romance or relationships, thanks to her vagabond lifestyle and the wounds of her pinball-in-the-machine childhood. A few adolescent infatuations had led her stumbling through her first experiments with dating and sex. The shifting sands of young adulthood had thrown her together with Miles, whose generous mentoring into the most elite circles of hacking, and steadfast support (no matter what happened later) had helped her come to terms with her sexuality and find her feet with the last stages of growing up. But while Skye had cared deeply, and lusted, she’d never been in love. Not as a girl, and never as an adult.

Then Grant Ward, her Robot SO, had all but laid his heart at her feet in a janitor’s closet while she was carrying a backpack of explosives.

For just a few hours, Skye had been filled with the joyous certainty of a full-grown woman who knows her heart is secure, and that her love is returned. Skye had still been wary of starting an actual relationship, but she already had ample proof of the lengths Grant Ward would go to in order to protect someone he cared about, and of the strength of his loyalty.

Spurred by May’s words as she left to find Maria Hill (or so she’d said at the time), Grant had found the courage to say everything Skye needed to hear, to tear down her last barriers. If there was never a right time to start something, then why wait? Her heart overflowing, Skye hadn’t let Grant move them to his quarters, or hers. Her need overwhelming, she hadn’t been able to let him off the couch in the lounge longer than it took both of them to get undressed.

Jemma’s autopsy of Eric Koenig had confirmed the same damning conclusion that Grant had already come to: about the same time Grant’s naked body had settled on top of hers, deliciously crushing her into the couch cushions, Melinda May had found Koenig waiting for the hack into the NSA satellite of the Fridge breach to finish. May had garrotted Koenig just as the man Skye loved entered her for the first time, showing her what it truly meant to be a lover. While May worked to hide Eric’s body, Skye had shuddered in ecstasy and dragged her nails down Grant’s back, as Grant groaned her name and gripped her hips hard enough to leave bruises.

With every word Jemma spoke, Skye had seen the last remnants of her lover fade away, leaving only the Specialist behind. Her SO, at least, returned in a slow trickle, but it wasn’t enough. Skye needed the man – she needed **her** man, the one she was beginning to dread she would **never** be able to stop loving.

Skye swallowed all the pleas and recriminations she wanted to use to make Grant admit he still felt the same way she did. This wasn’t the time. Dr Garner had cautioned her to take things slowly; one of the most fundamental pieces of Grant’s personality, his caregiver tendencies and need to protect, had received a huge blow. In large part because he’d relaxed his guard and indulged only his own needs, while he claimed the first thing he’d wanted for himself for a long time.

“So how does this thing work?”

* * *

As they filed off the Quinjet, Skye couldn’t look up to see Coulson’s disappointed gaze. She deliberately didn’t hear the suggestion that she report to medical. She simply returned the sniper rifle to the armoury, took a shower so quick the water didn’t warm, and slumped into her bunk.

“Thought I’d find you here.”

Skye looked up to see Ward in the doorway.

“What is it? I have 24 hours to complete my mission debrief.”

“That’s not exactly what I wanted to talk to you for.” Ward gestured with his head towards the main communal quarters. “Come on.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere right now,” Skye confessed.

“I know. That’s why I’m making it SO’s orders. On your feet, Rookie,” Ward’s voice wasn’t unkind, but it was definite. “If it helps, Trip’s got a bottle of the good stuff waiting.”

Skye looked at him thoughtfully. “That does help.”

So did the hand Ward offered her, and that he didn’t let go while he led her towards the room they’d set up as a makeshift rec room and bar.

As promised, Trip was waiting. Skye took a good look at the bottle standing on the bar, and her eyebrows rose, despite her entire body feeling numb. “Where’d you score that? Coulson’s stash?”

Tripp shook his head, smiling slightly. “Nah. Hunter donated it to the cause. He’s been here, too.”

Skye stood behind the bar stool next to Trip, silently taking in the quartet of glasses in front on her. Three had several fingers worth of excellent liquor; the fourth was empty.

“Please tell me that isn’t for Donnie.”

“This isn’t a rite for him, Skye, it’s for you,” Trip told her gently. “I did a college course in anthropology once; I remember reading about a couple of the ancient and even Dark Ages peoples where all the young warriors had to drink the blood of the first man they killed.”

Even in her current mood, Skye couldn’t help but say, “Gross,” as she sat down.

Trip nodded. “From the arrow or sword, not the corpse, luckily, or there probably would have been a lot more disease. But it was meant to keep the ghosts of all the men you killed as a warrior from following you. Guess it’s the sort of thing that gets passed down through the ages – with some modifications, thank Christ. When I made my first kill, Garrett sat me down with some shitty tequila and a couple of shot glasses.”

Grant had already taken the seat on the other side of Skye. “Me too. Told me it was an old SHIELD tradition to celebrate your first kill in the field. We knocked back several apiece, before he clapped me on the shoulder, told me congratulations, and wandered off with the bottle. I think I lasted five minutes after that before I threw it all up again.”

Trip snorted. “I could barely hold it back until he left the damn room. Only thing that kept me from puking on his shoes was the thought of what Garrett would do to me afterward.”

Skye looked down at the bar to keep her expression hidden. Ward and Trip had recounted some of the gory details about their respective training with Garrett while they were all hiding out in that cheap LA motel. She’d hacked into several SHIELD records to find out more. In between his affable smiles and exaggerated stories, Garrett had put the two men flanking her through the equivalent of the Navy SEALS Hell Week, spread out but repeated several times just that first year, in order to attempt to break them the same way Bahrain had broken May, and leave them ripe for Garrett’s plucking. There weren’t many people in the world she despised more than May, but Garrett was definitely one of them.

“Is that what we’re doing?” she asked bitterly. “Celebrating?”

Grant and Trip’s faces lost whatever grim amusement they’d had. Grant raised his glass solemnly, and told her, “No, Skye. We’re not giving you congratulations. We’re giving you condolences.”

Trip raised his glass in turn, and nodded.

Skye sighed and raised hers, and they all took the first sip together.

After drinking their way through several rounds in understanding silence, Skye started to silently weep. Trip let out an imperceptible sigh of relief, and gave Grant a meaningful nod before he left. Grant capped the bottle, hid it beneath the bar for Hunter to retrieve later, and gently steered Skye back to her room.

But it was Skye who dragged him into her quarters and locked the door. It was Skye who pulled his head down to hers, and kissed him like a starving woman. It was Skye who all but begged Grant not to turn her away again, because his touch was the only thing that made her feel like a real person instead of a monster.

But it was Grant who picked her up in his arms, and carried her to bed, before he did everything she asked.

 

**Author's Note:**

> _And now? I’m finally DONE! ‘Scuse me for a few days, everyone. I’m going to go catch up on Akatsuki no Yona, The Flash, Gotham, and The Librarians._


End file.
